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32 most important email etiquette tips

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32 most important email etiquette tips:1. Be concise and to the point.Do not make an e-mail longer than it needs to be. Remember that reading an e-mailis harder than reading printed communications and a long e-mail can be verydiscouraging to read.2. Answer all questions, and pre-empt further questions.An email reply must answer all questions, and pre-empt further questions – If you donot answer all the questions in the original email, you will receive further e-mailsregarding the unanswered questions, which will not only waste your time and yourcustomer’s time but also cause considerable frustration. Moreover, if you are able topre-empt relevant questions, your customer will be grateful and impressed with yourefficient and thoughtful customer service. Imagine for instance that a customersends you an email asking which credit cards you accept. Instead of just listing thecredit card types, you can guess that their next question will be about how they canorder, so you also include some order information and a URL to your order page.Customers will definitely appreciate this.3. Use proper spelling, grammar & punctuation.This is not only important because improper spelling, grammar and punctuation givea bad impression of your company, it is also important for conveying the messageproperly. E-mails with no full stops or commas are difficult to read and cansometimes even change the meaning of the text. And, if your program has a spellchecking option, why not use it?4. Make it personal.Not only should the e-mail be personally addressed, it should also include personali.e. customized content. For this reason auto replies are usually not very effective.However, templates can be used effectively in this way, see next tip.5. Use templates for frequently used responses.Some questions you get over and over again, such as directions to your office or howto subscribe to your newsletter. Save these texts as response templates and pastethese into your message when you need them. You can save your templates in aWord document, or use pre-formatted emails. Even better is a tool such asReplyMate for Outlook (allows you to use 10 templates for free).6. Answer swiftly.Customers send an e-mail because they wish to receive a quick response. If they didnot want a quick response they would send a letter or a fax. Therefore, each e-mailshould be replied to within at least 24 hours, and preferably within the same workingday. If the email is complicated, just send an email back saying that you havereceived it and that you will get back to them. This will put the customers mind atrest and usually customers will then be very patient!

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7. Do not attach unnecessary files.By sending large attachments you can annoy customers and even bring down theire-mail system. Wherever possible try to compress attachments and only sendattachments when they are productive. Moreover, you need to have a good virusscanner in place since your customers will not be very happy if you send themdocuments full of viruses!8. Use proper structure & layout.Since reading from a screen is more difficult than reading from paper, the structureand lay out is very important for e-mail messages. Use short paragraphs and blanklines between each paragraph. When making points, number them or mark eachpoint as separate to keep the overview.9. Do not overuse the high priority option.We all know the story of the boy who cried wolf. If you overuse the high priorityoption, it will lose its function when you really need it. Moreover, even if a mail hashigh priority, your message will come across as slightly aggressive if you flag it ashigh priority.10. Do not write in CAPITALS.IF YOU WRITE IN CAPITALS IT SEEMS AS IF YOU ARE SHOUTING. This can be highlyannoying and might trigger an unwanted response in the form of a flame mail.Therefore, try not to send any email text in capitals.11. Dont leave out the message thread.When you reply to an email, you must include the original mail in your reply, in otherwords click Reply, instead of New Mail. Some people say that you must remove theprevious message since this has already been sent and is therefore unnecessary.However, I could not agree less. If you receive many emails you obviously cannotremember each individual email. This means that a threadless email will not provideenough information and you will have to spend a frustratingly long time to find outthe context of the email in order to deal with it. Leaving the thread might take afraction longer in download time, but it will save the recipient much more time andfrustration in looking for the related emails in their inbox!12. Add disclaimers to your emails.It is important to add disclaimers to your internal and external mails, since this canhelp protect your company from liability. Consider the following scenario: anemployee accidentally forwards a virus to a customer by email. The customerdecides to sue your company for damages. If you add a disclaimer at the bottom ofevery external mail, saying that the recipient must check each email for viruses andthat it cannot be held liable for any transmitted viruses, this will surely be of help toyou in court (read more about email disclaimers). Another example: an employee

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sues the company for allowing a racist email to circulate the office. If your companyhas an email policy in place and adds an email disclaimer to every mail that statesthat employees are expressly required not to make defamatory statements, youhave a good case of proving that the company did everything it could to preventoffensive emails.13. Read the email before you send it.A lot of people dont bother to read an email before they send it out, as can be seenfrom the many spelling and grammar mistakes contained in emails. Apart from this,reading your email through the eyes of the recipient will help you send a moreeffective message and avoid misunderstandings and inappropriate comments.14. Do not overuse Reply to All.Only use Reply to All if you really need your message to be seen by each person whoreceived the original message.15. Mailings > use the Bcc: field or do a mail merge.When sending an email mailing, some people place all the email addresses in the To:field. There are two drawbacks to this practice: (1) the recipient knows that youhave sent the same message to a large number of recipients, and (2) you arepublicizing someone elses email address without their permission. One way to getround this is to place all addresses in the Bcc: field. However, the recipient will onlysee the address from the To: field in their email, so if this was empty, the To: fieldwill be blank and this might look like spamming. You could include the mailing listemail address in the To: field, or even better, if you have Microsoft Outlook andWord you can do a mail merge and create one message for each recipient. A mailmerge also allows you to use fields in the message so that you can for instanceaddress each recipient personally. For more information on how to do a Word mailmerge, consult the Help in Word.16. Take care with abbreviations and emoticons.In business emails, try not to use abbreviations such as BTW (by the way) and LOL(laugh out loud). The recipient might not be aware of the meanings of theabbreviations and in business emails these are generally not appropriate. The samegoes for emoticons, such as the smiley :-). If you are not sure whether yourrecipient knows what it means, it is better not to use it.17. Be careful with formatting.Remember that when you use formatting in your emails, the sender might not beable to view formatting, or might see different fonts than you had intended. Whenusing colors, use a color that is easy to read on the background.

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18. Take care with rich text and HTML messages.Be aware that when you send an email in rich text or HTML format, the sender mightonly be able to receive plain text emails. If this is the case, the recipient will receiveyour message as a .txt attachment. Most email clients however, including MicrosoftOutlook, are able to receive HTML and rich text messages.19. Do not forward chain letters.Do not forward chain letters. We can safely say that all of them are hoaxes. Justdelete the letters as soon as you receive them.20. Do not request delivery and read receipts.This will almost always annoy your recipient before he or she has even read yourmessage. Besides, it usually does not work anyway since the recipient could haveblocked that function, or his/her software might not support it, so what is the use ofusing it? If you want to know whether an email was received it is better to ask therecipient to let you know if it was received.21. Do not ask to recall a message.Biggest chances are that your message has already been delivered and read. A recallrequest would look very silly in that case wouldnt it? It is better just to send anemail to say that you have made a mistake. This will look much more honest thantrying to recall a message.22. Do not copy a message or attachment without permission.Do not copy a message or attachment belonging to another user without permissionof the originator. If you do not ask permission first, you might be infringing oncopyright laws.23. Do not use email to discuss confidential information.Sending an email is like sending a postcard. If you dont want your email to bedisplayed on a bulletin board, dont send it. Moreover, never make any libelous,sexist or racially discriminating comments in emails, even if they are meant to be ajoke.24. Use a meaningful subject.Try to use a subject that is meaningful to the recipient as well as yourself. Forinstance, when you send an email to a company requesting information about aproduct, it is better to mention the actual name of the product, e.g. Product Ainformation than to just say product information or the companys name in thesubject.

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25. Use active instead of passive.Try to use the active voice of a verb wherever possible. For instance, We will processyour order today, sounds better than Your order will be processed today. The firstsounds more personal, whereas the latter, especially when used frequently, soundsunnecessarily formal.26. Avoid using URGENT and IMPORTANT.Even more so than the high-priority option, you must at all times try to avoid thesetypes of words in an email or subject line. Only use this if it is a really, really urgentor important message.27. Avoid long sentences.Try to keep your sentences to a maximum of 15-20 words. Email is meant to be aquick medium and requires a different kind of writing than letters. Also take care notto send emails that are too long. If a person receives an email that looks like adissertation, chances are that they will not even attempt to read it!28. Dont send or forward emails containing libelous, defamatory, offensive,racist or obscene remarks.By sending or even just forwarding one libelous, or offensive remark in an email, youand your company can face court cases resulting in multi-million dollar penalties.29. Dont forward virus hoaxes and chain letters.If you receive an email message warning you of a new unstoppable virus that willimmediately delete everything from your computer, this is most probably a hoax. Byforwarding hoaxes you use valuable bandwidth and sometimes virus hoaxes containviruses themselves, by attaching a so-called file that will stop the dangerous virus.The same goes for chain letters that promise incredible riches or ask your help for acharitable cause. Even if the content seems to be bona fide, the senders are usuallynot. Since it is impossible to find out whether a chain letter is real or not, the bestplace for it is the recycle bin.30. Keep your language gender neutral.In this day and age, avoid using sexist language such as: The user should add asignature by configuring his email program. Apart from using he/she, you can alsouse the neutral gender: The user should add a signature by configuring the emailprogram.31. Dont reply to spam.By replying to spam or by unsubscribing, you are confirming that your email addressis live. Confirming this will only generate even more spam. Therefore, just hit thedelete button or use email software to remove spam automatically.

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32. Use cc: field sparingly.Try not to use the cc: field unless the recipient in the cc: field knows why they arereceiving a copy of the message. Using the cc: field can be confusing since therecipients might not know who is supposed to act on the message. Also, whenresponding to a cc: message, should you include the other recipient in the cc: fieldas well? This will depend on the situation. In general, do not include the person inthe cc: field unless you have a particular reason for wanting this person to see yourresponse. Again, make sure that this person will know why they are receiving a copy.How do you enforce email etiquette?The first step is to create a written email policy. This email policy should include allthe dos and donts concerning the use of the companys email system and should bedistributed amongst all employees. Secondly, employees must be trained to fullyunderstand the importance of email etiquette. Finally, implementation of the rulescan be monitored by using email management software and email response tools.